Last Updated on: August 9th, 2021
People love visuals. No doubt.
A blog without any images in the fast-paced, technological world of today is like a movie without any color.
Visuals set the tone for your blog and they greatly affect the way your reader views your content.
In a snap, with a good photo editor, such as Colorcinch (aff link), you can make your text sound, funny, yummy, scary, beautiful, inspirational, or anything you like!
That’s why Rochelle and I co-created this post… to help you share your information with your audience in creative ways using visuals!
Just make sure you use visuals that are SEO-friendly… whatever you do!
Visual Stats You Shouldn’t Ignore
According to an infographic by MDG advertising, articles with images get 94% more total views and they can jump up to 48% more if they contain both photos and videos. That being said, if you’re looking for greater click-through rates and engagement, this is your easier-than-ever your solution to drive up that traffic.
Of course, finding and publishing attractive images is not the same as shoddily selecting images that are not related to your content in any way.
The trick is to choose the best and most suitable visuals and use those to drive your blog traffic.
Yes, it’s easier said than done… but if you don’t want to use creative commons-licensed images, here are 6 simple ways your visuals should get results!
6 Ways to Use Visuals to Boost Traffic to Your Blog
1: Snap your own photos.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a phone camera photo to upload to your blog. In fact, in terms of originality and uniqueness, it is often preferred. Whether you’re covering an article on a new travel spot, sharing a household tip you just used, or giving how-to instructions, your own camera’s photos are great options, it’s better if you snap your own photos to use in your blog or on social media.
2: Create infographics.
Before you offended and start ranting about how you’re not a graphic designer and have no idea in the world about how to create graphics, much less create infographics, take deep breath and listen up.
First of all, you don’t need to get fancy with the designs or the detail.
Even a simple infographic is enough to drive more traffic and engagement than simple text.
The reason, according to Hubspot, is probably because visual content such as an infographic is much easier to digest and that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster to the brain than text!
Now, back to how we can create easy infographics. Hey, who says you need to be a graphic designer when you have free tools like Piktochart, easel.ly, and visualize at hand?!
Plus.. even Canva has an infographic maker now!
For more infographic-making tools, just Google “best way to create infographics” and start experimenting!
(I did this… and created an infographic for this post. See below!!!)
3: Use screenshots.
If you’re writing a blog post on how to perform a specific task on your phone, one of the easiest ways to provide images is to take screenshots.
Screenshots are so easy to capture and they don’t take extra thought, effort, or photography skills to be created.
How-to guides with step-by-step instructions can easily be accompanied by screenshots.
You can also use arrows or red lines to instruct the viewer even further.
To take a screenshot on a PC, you have two options:
- Press the Fn button while pressing End (Fn+End). Then open Paint, place your cursor in the white box and then hit Ctrl+V. You can then edit your image using one of these tools.
- Use the Snipping Tool. (Wording Well owner Lorraine Reguly personally LOVES this tool!)
4: Create your own graphics.
This subheading is not exclusively for graphic designers, of course (again, don’t get mad and just skip to number 5).
There are a ton of free sites like Canva, PicMonkey, and Pixlr Express that will let you create your own blog images. Heck, you can even use a program like Paint to do so!
But if you have some graphic designing skills such as a bit of Photoshop or Illustrator skills on you, there is plenty you can do to create compelling visuals.
Not only, will you have created an original image, but one that perfectly fits with your article, blog, and audience.
You can create a simple, attractive graphic and add it as an introductory image to your blog post the way Brightest has for this article.
Or, if you’re great with even advanced graphic designing you can get fancy the way quicksprout often does with its images.
5: Create word clouds.
Word clouds are also brilliant for adding to blog posts and the best part is that they are so easy to make!
You can create your own word clouds with a theme, design, text, and colors of your choice. Or you can try a word cloud tool generator such as wordle or worditout.
We also love the uniqueness of Tagul word cloud generator where you can create a word inside a specific shape (man, heart, spaceship, etc).
Pick the most relevant keywords from your blog topic and think of ways to expand on them the way you do when you brainstorm. Pretty, soon you’ll have a cute and creative graphic that will make a perfect addition to your blog post.
6: Use graphical representations or statistics.
Graphical representations are not only easy to absorb, but also very persuasive.
While an infographic states facts with the help of images, a graphical representation will detail out the statistics and reveal trends.
Graphical representations are best used when you’re making comparisons (pie charts), showcasing trends (line graphs), or doing both (tables/bar graphs).
Also, when you have a lot of data, it’s best to plot it on a graph. If you have completed your own research on a topic (i.e. a simple survey), you can easily plot out the data on an MS Excel or an MS Word table, chart, or graph. You may also use someone else’s data, findings, or research to validate, and further support, a point you made in your article, but make sure you give them the credit!
Chime In With YOUR Visuals…
Is there another type of visual content you use? Let us know, because we’d love to hear about other methods to drive engagement and boost blog traffic!
Rochelle Ceira is an admirer of creative, digital photography and street art. Though she’s an art aficionado, her leisure time she dedicatedly updates insightful posts into architecture dissertation, education, marketing, etc. Connect with her on Twitter.
Thank you for the great tips. We also notice that posts in social media inclines to be unnoticed if there is no visuals, watermark is also a respectable and we will use it more frequently.
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Great to hear!
Yes, I believe the same that using attractive images and videos we can generate more traffic towards our blog. Thanks for the tips.
You’re welcome! Be sure to include visuals when you complete your assignments for your clients!
Through utilizing inventive plan and photographs we can pull in perusers towards our blog, yes I concur that we can utilize screenshots and make our own designs to make our blog compelling. I loved your post, thank you for sharing.
Shilpa, thanks! I’m glad you liked it!
That is true that infographics are used to boost traffic but terrible thing is that, although there are some free tools like Canva available to design them, however, there are only a few websites that offer to post infographics. Most of the websites charge price even if infographic contains awesome information.
That is why you should post them on your own site!
By using creative design and photos we can attract readers towards our blog, yes i am agreed that we can use screenshots and create our own graphics to make our blog effective. I liked your post, thank you for sharing.
Yes! Very true!
You’re welcome. 🙂
Hello Lorraine,
Thanks for sharing these awesome tips. Images and visuals are a best way to improve the User Experience on our blogs. And finding the best suited image for our blog post is not an easy task, instead creating our own graphics is easy and fun.
Visuals are necessary to hold readers’ attention.
Most people love images!
It is hard to find people who simply love the written word so much that they will read the entire article. But if images are used in your blog posts, you have a better chance of capturing their attention!
Hi Lorraine
What can we do without images. They are like the DNA of a blog post. Images have a way of getting the attention of readers. It is no wonder that Visual platforms have been thriving on the internet.
Love your tips on creating visuals in a blog. So many ways to achieve the goal. Thanks for sharing. Take Care
Ikechi, visuals are becoming more and more popular as time passes. In a way, it is good, but for blind bloggers such as Maxwell Ivey and Kerry Kijewski, it is bad. It is also bad for those bloggers who don’t know how to create them!
Creating visuals present obstacles for many, myself included, as there is a big learning curve to using some of these platforms.
However, in order to continue to grow, we need to embrace them and either learn to create them ourselves or find someone to create them for us!
Visuals, indeed, are like the DNA oof blog posts! Great analogy!